“The balance of powers in the legislative and judicial branches were supposed to balance and keep in check, hold in check, the potential tyranny from the executive branch overstepping their bounds,” Joyner explained. “The people are not always right, it depends on what people they are. And another thing the founders warned about is this thing will only work for a moral and a religious people. You remove morality, you remove the religious influence, and it cannot work.”

“We’re headed for serious tyranny, a terrible tyranny right now,” he continued. “But guess what? The kingdom is coming, the Kingdom of God is coming. And America is not the Kingdom of God. I think we have been used in some wonderful and powerful ways by God, we’ve been one of the most generous nations in history. We’ve done so much good.”

“That’s why I appeal to the Lord: Don’t let us be totally destroyed, please raise up those who will save us. And as I’ve been telling friends for a long time, no election is going to get the right person in there because the system is so broken.”

Joyner added that the “only hope is a military takeover, martial law.”

“And that the most crucial element of that is who to the martial [sic] is going to be,” he said. “I believe there are noble leaders in our military that love the republic and love everything we stand for. And they could seize the government.”

There used to be a thing called treason. People used to go to jail for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. Maybe you get a pass if you are praying to God to overthrow the government.

09/02/2013

Josh Marshall, who returned to his Talking Points Memo website after a week's vacation, has this to say about Syria and us.

I’ve been on vacation for the last week (actually still am). So I’ve only half or less heard all the commotions and developments in Syria. Besides the wonderfulness of being on vacation, being absent from all this has felt like a blessing.

I’ve generally been opposed to our getting involved in Syria’s civil war at all, especially as the rebel groups have become increasingly radicalized. In the present situation, which has its own special dynamics because of the use of chemical weaponry and President Obama’s extremely unfortunate ‘red line’, I’m uncertain what I think is the right thing to do.

But below are a few general points that I think are important to keep in mind.

1. Don’t make threats or tie yourself down, unless you’re sure you can and will follow through. And even then, do your best not to make threats; keep your options open.

2. Don’t listen to exile groups or rebel leaders. They may be brave, patriotic and even great. But they are also, almost by definition, opportunists and liars, eager to drag great powers into conflicts that have little or nothing to do with their own interests. Journalists only amplify this.

3. The people who talk most about international law and norms are mainly self-appointed groups with no actual constituencies who navigate and lobby elite global opinion, often with very benign motives and sometimes with benign effects.

4. Whether the US attacks Damascus or does not attack Damascus won’t have much effect on whether the US can in the future, under whatever circumstances, threaten or use force wherever else it wants to, to buttress or enforce whatever other international norm it chooses to. The entire concept of ‘unitary credibility’ is flawed to its core.

5. Most of these world policing conundrums come down to the imbalance of power and accountability in the international state system.

12/06/2012

Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program subjected thousands of unwitting American service members around the globe to substances including sarin and VX nerve gases between 1962 and 1974.

According to papers obtained from the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the 267th Chemical Platoon was activated on Okinawa on Dec. 1, 1962, with "the mission of operation of Site 2, DOD (Department of Defense) Project 112." Before coming to Okinawa, the 36-member platoon had received training at Denver's Rocky Mountain Arsenal, one of the key U.S. chemical and biological weapons (CBW) facilities. Upon its arrival on the island, the platoon was billeted just north of Okinawa City at Chibana — the site of a poison gas leak seven years later. Between December 1962 and August 1965, the 267th platoon received three classified shipments — codenamed YBA, YBB and YBF — believed to include sarin and mustard gas.

For decades, the Pentagon denied the existence of Project 112. Only in 2000 did the department finally admit to having exposed its own service members to CBW tests, which it claimed were designed to enable the U.S. to better plan for potential attacks on its troops. In response to mounting evidence of serious health problems among a number of veterans subjected to these experiments, Congress forced the Pentagon in 2003 to create a list of service members exposed during Project 112. While the Department of Defense acknowledges it conducted the tests in Hawaii, Panama and aboard ships in the Pacific Ocean, this is the first time that Okinawa — then under U.S. jurisdiction — has been implicated in the project.

Corroborating suspicions that Project 112 tests were conducted on Okinawa is the inclusion on the Pentagon's list of at least one U.S. veteran exposed on the island. "Sprayed from numbered containers" reads the Project 112 file on former marine Don Heathcote. Heathcote, a private first class stationed on Okinawa's Camp Hansen in 1962, clearly remembers the circumstances in which he was exposed.

"I was assigned for approximately 30 days to a crew in the northern jungles of Okinawa," Heathcote told The Japan Times. "I sprayed foliage with chemicals from drums with different-colored faces. As we did this, a guy came by with a clipboard and made notes. How better to run a test than to color-code each barrel?"

Heathcote believes the chemicals were experimental herbicides, including Agent Purple, a forerunner to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange. He says the spraying killed large swaths of the jungle — and took an equally devastating toll on his own health.

"Soon after I returned home, I underwent an operation to extract polyps from my nose. The doctors removed enough to fill a cup. Plus they diagnosed me with bronchitis and sinusitis connected to chemical exposure," said Heathcote.

Michelle Gatz, the veterans services officer who first uncovered the records of the 267th Chemical Platoon, suspects that Heathcote may have been exposed to substances even more dangerous than defoliants. "Project 112 had thousands of sub-projects testing a variety of poisons, drugs and germs. It has been compared to an octopus with its tentacles all over the place — and one of those places was Okinawa."

Gatz and Heathcote are attempting to persuade U.S. authorities to disclose details of Project 112 tests on the island, but so far to no avail. The Japan Times approached the Defense Department for comment on Nov. 5; at the time of publication, the Pentagon said it was still investigating the issue.